Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kim—well, I don’t have to tell you. All he does is study, study, study.”
    Adam listened to the rest of Ollie’s report of his former housemates’ lives with half an ear as he moved from the kitchen to the upstairs hall closet, where he was fairly convinced one of his towels had ended up, even though he’d always kept his things in his own room. He’d tried not caring about the missing towel once he’d realized it was gone, telling himself it was a towel and didn’t matter, but it had become his favorite one in some obtuse way, possibly simply because it was missing. Searching for it now through his discomfort seemed less upsetting than trying to live with leaving it behind.
    “So how has it been, living on your own?” Ollie asked. “You get lonely, or just happy to have a place all to yourself?”
    Adam couldn’t find the towel. It wasn’t anywhere in the closet, and now the closet was a mess, which meant he had to stand there and make it right. “A little of both, I guess.”
    “Here, let me help,” Ollie offered, taking some of the towels Adam had rooted through. Adam hid his wince at the idea of Ollie folding anything correctly, but apparently not very well because Ollie smiled at him wryly. “It’s okay, dude. They’re my towels. I don’t mind how they’re folded.”
    Adam sighed and added not caring about poor folding to his already burdened list of things-he-was-ignoring. “I know. It’s just . . . well, you know.”
    “I do, man.” Ollie’s smile died, and he looked concerned. “Is that why you moved out? Were we too messy?”
    “No,” Adam said, then forced himself to be honest. He liked Ollie. “Okay, that was always a little hard. But it’s important for me to learn to live with that too, so no, that wasn’t why.”
    “Was it your house thing? Did we have guests over too often and they freaked you out?”
    Now Adam was starting to get embarrassed. “No.” That hadn’t been why he’d left, though not having to face that awkwardness was a perk.
    Ollie studied him a moment, then grimaced. “It’s Brad, isn’t it?”
    Adam became very focused on folding a washcloth.
    Ollie shook his head. “I told him to lay off. I told him.”
    “It’s okay,” Adam lied. “He means well. And really, it was time for me to try living on my own. It was always supposed to be the next step, and now I’ve done it. Or am doing it or whatever. It’s okay.”
    “Well, come visit us, all right? I really do miss you, man. Not for the cleaning, either. You’re good company.”
    Adam rolled his eyes. “Please. I am not.”
    “You are! You respect people’s space, you know? You’re good people.” He clapped Adam on the shoulder.
    Adam blushed a little and smiled, a real smile this time. “Thanks. We’ll have to do coffee sometime.”
    “It’s a date,” Ollie said, aiming his index finger at Adam in a faux warning as he backed away and headed toward his own room. “See you around.”
    Adam spent another half an hour trying to find the towel, which was the last of the items he was missing. He’d done well with staying in the Wrong Space, but he was stuck now because he couldn’t find that fucking towel. It was a task unfinished, a puzzle without an end, a string of ceiling tiles to count that kept adding more squares. Worse, with every minute he lingered, he increased the odds—which he calculated like a rabid squirrel inside his head—that he would run into Brad.
    At four thirty in the middle of the laundry room, that’s exactly what happened. Except it was less that he ran into Brad than that Brad came looking for him.
    “I heard you were here.”
    Brad stood on the stairs, looking down at Adam still searching for his towel. Poised like Joan Crawford in a movie, Brad appeared ready to give some overly dramatic line. Knowing him, he had a few choice ones queued up and ready to go.
    “Hey,” Adam replied, trying like hell to sound casual. “Just looking for my burgundy